Team:UCAS-China/Human Practices

Integrated Human Practice

No man is an island even the waves groan in foamy anger. Although our ability of communication is restricted due to the pandemic, we managed to stay in touch with the world. By interviewing multiple entities like companies and doctors, interacting with publics through a questionnaire, inspiring future academics and communicating with our iGEM communities, we obtained a better idea of how our technology can be applied in society.

We always believe that it is of great importance to view our project from as many different aspects as possible, which can give us the general idea about what the world think about our work and what can we improve to better serve the world. This year, we refreshed our HP organizing methodology by a “problem-solution” loop: Not only seek answers with certain questions, but also discover problems behind our expectations.

1. What is a better H.pylori therapy?

♦ Dr. Hong, Jiande No.2 Renmin Hospital

“High targeting is of high priority.”

Dr. Haoxiang Hong is the first but the last doctor we interviewed before the pandemic broke out. However as an experienced clinical expert, he provided us with an enormous amount of information that was even enough to take a huge step in our early research. When asked about the existing issues of current treatment, he immediately came up with these problems:

i Side effects

ii Recrudescence

iii Antibiotics Resistance

iv Drug Overdose

He attributed these problems to the lack of targeting medicine, which inspired us of the design of ammonia sensor that can specifically detect and target H.pylori.

♦ SHEEP Questionnaire

To obtain a comprehensive understanding and attitude towards H.pylori, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and Microecological Balance (MB) in Chinese population, we designed an opinion survey about GMOs and their use in the treatment. We were fortunate enough to receive 810 questionnaires in the end. The full results are displayed here.

Fig. 1 Age

Fig. 2 Education

Fig. 3 Background

From the responses, we know that nearly 80% of responses were comprised of those aged 10 - 29 and 40 - 49 (see Fig. 1). And it was delighted to learn that a majority has received high school education and higher (see Fig. 2), while only 14% were of Life scientific or medical backgrounds (see Fig. 3).

To make better use of this questionnaire, we conducted a deeper analysis. (The samples whose age are below 10 or beyond 60 were excluded because of the lack of quantities.)

i. Living Therapeutic Acceptance

“Mild Tranplantation, rather than Microbial Avoidance.”

For this part of the question, this questionnaire adopts a step-by-step survey method, through the “Drinking lactic acid bacteria beverage - Intestinal flora transplantation – GMOs introduction” progressive contexts of different popularity, different difficulty, and different risks, to investigate the overall acceptance of microbial therapy.The results are as follows (Note that only respondents who have received the previous level of therapy can watch and answer the next level of therapy).

Fig. 4 Drinking lactic acid bacteria beverage

Fig. 5 Intestinal flora transplantation

Fig. 6 GMOs introduction

It is obvious to see that the acceptance of each type of microbial therapies is declining with the increase in risk levels, difficulty and other factors (Due to the rules above, acceptance is decreased as long as nonacceptance arises). However, among the groups who chose “not accept” in the second question, “microbial transplantation” is not the main objection, but “transplantation methods” (Intestinal flora transplantation is often performed through colonoscopy). This indicates the necessity of a gentle transplantation process, which becomes an inspiration and a strong motivator in our hardware design. At the same time, the percentage of “not accepting” is relatively lower among the third group of respondents (i.e. those who accepted intestinal flora transplantation). This result is also encouraging: After a long period of popular science propaganda, publics no longer simply regard “Genetic Modification” as a beast. Instead, they began to think more rationally about the potential for the development of new therapies - of course, all of these are built on the premise of safety.

ii. Cognition of the beneficial effects of H.pylori

“Self-media is a rising power of promotion.”

Fig. 7 Cognition of the beneficial effects of H.pylori

The result of this question is beyond our expectation: not because there are too few people who know its benefits, but too many. We learned this interesting but unconfirmed conclusion in the mid-term investigation of the project-even from a very recent paper!

It is hard to believe that the respondents can get informed in such a short time. If the respondents’ answer is reliable, the advantages of contemporary self-media in science popularization can be well proved, which means it can also be used as an important tool for our future popularization and promotion of our project.

Click here to see the full analysis report.

2. How could we modify our project as a competitive solution?

♦ TreatGut

“What's your advantage over existing therapies? It is the stability.”

Founded in 2016, TreatGut is a large-scale comprehensive biomedical technology company focusing on human (intestinal) microecology, whose business fields cover medical diagnosis, microecological therapy and medical big data mining.

After our brainstorm, “A efficient therapy to eliminate H.pylori“ was eventually chosed as the prototype of our project. But after the early interview with TreatGut, “stability”, instead of “elimination”, became one of our keywords.

When mentioned about the potential significance of our project, the representative said “It's really difficult to strike a delicate balance when H.pylori is the only microorganism live in the stomach, but the situation could be different if another entity is introduced – Why can’t it be your GMOs?“ This idea sparkled us to focus more on the homeostasis establishment rather than efficient elimination, which has made the novelty of our project.

♦ DaXing Bio-Medicine Industry Park

“Why limited to H.pylori? A modifiable design worth a better try.”

The capsule robot used for “rapid detection” and “intelligent drug delivery” is one of the highlights of our project design. As an effective substitute for imaging tools such as gastroscope, capsule robot can give patients a better treatment experience, and complete a high targeting drug release. However, cost is something inevitable on the way of entrepreneurship and high cost is the most deadly issues of our capsule.

When we were struggling to cut the cost, the visit to DaXing Bio-Medicine Industry Park came to our rescue. The companies put forward many opinions and suggestions on the design of our hardware part, starting from the large-scale industrial production and mature commercial design. In the current medical environment, simple and rapid detection, imaging and accurate drug release are the problems that need to be solved in the medical frontier field. Our capsule robot just has such a broad prospect - we can divide the robot with fixed function and single structure into several modular components that can be assembled, and can be improved according to the actual medical needs and constraints Line module reorganization to achieve more diversified function construction, which led us a brand new path to approach cost-effectiveness by sharing the cost, rather than just lowering it.